Sonderband 2. International Council on Archives. Dritte Europäische Archivkonferenz, Wien 11. bis 15. Mai 1993. Tagungsprotokolle (1996)

3. Session / Séance. Sharing of Experience and Exchange of Staff / Partage d’Expériences et Echange des Personnes - Thibodeau, Sharon: The Pitfalls of Terminology and linguistic Barriers / Pieges de la Terminologie et Barrieres linguistiques (english 207 - français 217)

3. Session/Séance: Thibodeau, Pitfalls of Terminology and linguistic Barriers

These draft rules circulated to members of the ICA as IS AD (G): General International of Standard Archival Description. Comments received concerning them generally support the Commission’s confidence in their world-wide applicability.

Assessing the Role of Professional Standards

It is important to take a few minutes in closing to assess the role of professional standards in meeting the linguistic challenges faced by the international archival community. I believe that role has multiple facets:

1. The standards development process helps to identify linguistic barriers by providing opportunities for archivists to discuss and clarify basic archival concepts and practices.

2. The standards review process helps to break down these barriers by encouraging reviewers to translate the clarified concepts and practices constituting the standard into their own language.

3. Finally, the standards implementation process eliminates barriers by requiring adherents to refer to the standard when discussing the concepts or engaging in the practices it comprises.

I believe that adherence to professional standards can have an effect on international archival communication equivalent to that achieved among the graduates of a single archival education program. Standards enable archivists to agree on a vocabulary of concepts and to use this vocabulary both to share current experience and to plan future cooperative projects.

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